Volume One: The Hell-Class Lord World, Chapter 95: The Corpse-Eating Worm Legion

After Chen Gu sent out the Fire Spirit Crows, he quickly contacted Kebas again.

He asked for nothing else, only that Kebas watch and see what kind of change his attacks would bring about in those insects.

At the very least, Chen Gu needed to determine the effect fire would have on them. If it proved effective, he would summon fire elementals; if not, he would have to change his spellcasting.

Not long after the Fire Spirit Crows were dispatched, Chen Gu suddenly heard a deep, thunderous rumble rising from beneath the Great Rift not far away.

The Corpse-Eating Vines that had been sent down to the bottom of the Great Rift to make contact with those twisted trees had finally met the other side.

But from that sound alone, Chen Gu knew the outcome could hardly be good.

"Pan, pack up. We’re leaving."

"Leaving?" Pan asked in confusion. "Where to?"

"Through the underground. We’ll circle around behind the enemy. I’ve already had Kebas mark the position from the rear. As long as we leave before they get here, we’ll still make it in time."

Pan thought it over seriously. "Does my lord mean that instead of them pressing us, we will press them?"

"Exactly. I didn’t want to do this at first, but you saw it too. Something is wrong beneath the rift. That forest has been affected and is now running wild."

Chen Gu pointed straight down. He did not even need to look; from the noise alone, he knew that what was below was not his own force.

Not to mention that he had already sensed the news that several of his Corpse-Eating Vines had been destroyed.

"Leave some of the Corpse-Eating Vines here. And although I don’t know why they’ve grown so furious, this should help. Keep more of them behind."

Chen Gu quickly took out a sheet of paper and stamped it with the Breath of the Elves.

When that was done, he leaped onto the vine carriage.

By then, Pan was already in the driver’s seat. On the map in his hands, Chen Gu had already marked the position Kebas had fixed.

Pan had no eyes, and he did not need to see; whether moving above ground or below it made no difference to him.

Once the vine carriage was ready, the rest of the wagons automatically coupled behind it, and all doors and windows were sealed shut to keep the earth from getting inside.

The Bloodshadow Wolves under Chen Gu’s command and the ordinary wolves under Pan’s command all boarded the carriages.

Then the vine-light convoy began to run. After only a few strides, it plunged into the soil.

When they entered the earth, Pan was even struck by flying dirt.

But he quickly grew accustomed to underground travel, keeping the convoy about thirty meters below the surface. To avoid being discovered, he deliberately took a detour.

Meanwhile, Kebas was also keeping watch over that gigantic insect as Chen Gu had instructed.

To Kebas, merely glancing at that creature was enough to make him sick for half a year.

The style of research in Crow Nest City was already bizarre enough. The insect before him was even more so, the strangest of the strange.

Because communication was inconvenient, Kebas had not described the creature’s appearance in detail to Chen Gu.

It looked like an enlarged caterpillar mixed together with a sludge monster, a slug, and some sort of slime.

Its body was entirely green, and on its surface grew many mouths and eyes.

Every time it moved, clumps of green flesh dropped from its body.

Those clumps changed rapidly, some taking human form, others becoming smaller insects, all of them trying to flee in every direction.

At such times, the ghosts surrounding the insect would fly out on their own, seize the flesh, and feed it back into the creature’s mouth.

At the same time, everything edible and organic in its path was swallowed into that mouth and turned into the force driving it onward.

Because it ate as it walked, the insect advanced at a rather slow pace.

It could only cover about seven to eight thousand meters in an hour.

But wherever it passed, nothing remained except slime, not even a blade of grass. The ground was bare and empty, like a road cleared by a road machine.

Kebas followed behind it and did not dare step onto the ground, fearing the slime might be dangerous.

He could only keep pace from a distance in the nearby woods, occasionally sending out swarms of mosquitoes to keep watch on the enemy.

Fortunately, he discovered that those insects seemed never to eat inorganic matter, nor did they care what might lie underground.

His burrowing insects had followed behind them without being discovered, and without suffering any effect.

Only then did Kebas feel somewhat relieved.

Otherwise, he would never have agreed to let Chen Gu come through from below.

And it was precisely because he had seen this undead insect species that Kebas clearly felt the pressure.

He knew very well that creatures like this were not something the more than two hundred thousand fire elementals he had seen in Fire Tome City could deal with.

If those fire elementals wanted to bring down this kind of insect, they would at least have to lose half their number.

Just as Kebas was considering how to deal with the insects, the Fire Spirit Crows Chen Gu had sent finally flew above the giant creature.

Seeing more than a dozen Fire Spirit Crows suddenly appear overhead, the undead hero walking at the front of the insect formation abruptly raised his head.

He was a ghost hero, and the light radiating from his body was green, as though he were soaked in green liquid.

Even his appearance was unusual.

Part of his head had been cut away, and the upper half was a glass jar, inside which a head floated.

If such a figure had appeared among the zombies, he would have been a stitched monster of unmistakable importance.

But on a ghost, he looked rather eerie.

The mount he rode was also a snake with bat wings.

That snake could not even truly fly; it could only rear up its upper body, with its tail still dragging on the ground.

It was less that the ghost hero rode it than that he stood upon it.

Fixed to the strange snake’s back were two banners: one bearing the ghost hero’s own emblem, the other the emblem of this legion.

Both battle standards had green fields. The ghost hero’s mark was a brain floating in a glass jar; the legion’s was a caterpillar surrounded by countless ghosts.

Standing on the back of the strange snake, the ghost hero leaned half against the two banner poles, and with a lift of his head he could see the Fire Spirit Crows crossing the sky.

"The enemy has arrived. It seems our opponent is no fool. Raise the protective barrier. Do not let our pets be struck by magic."

The ghost hero gave the order at once.

At his command, all the ghosts rose into the air, turning their bodies into a pale white curtain of light that enveloped the giant insect.

Since the ghosts had gone off to attend to other tasks, no one was left to manage the flesh falling from the insect’s body, and by then some of it had already escaped into the nearby woods.